Gilles Deleuze was very much hated in Italy. Especially by the Academia. He was hated because he was a supporter of the French movement in 1968, then of the Italian Autonomia Operaia and finally of the Italian movement in 1977. Philosopher on the side of “those who have no part”, philosopher of conflict. These “dangerous” leanings – and not only his hostility towards Hegelian dialectics – earned him years of ostracism. Then the 1980s came, and with them Heidegger and the “pensiero debole” (weak thought), the end of Hegelian Marxism, and Deleuze was still treated badly, because his “Postmodernity” – which he fully theorized together with Félix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus – was shaped around hate for the State, “war machines”, the creation of forms of life alternative to capitalism. If it must be Postmodernity, so reasoned the “priest” in our country, then that means the end of struggles and of History, and the euphoric acceptance of the present, of Craxi and Berlusconi.

As was the case with Michel Foucault, the Italian Academia gradually and with much delay started to accept the “monster” Gilles Deleuze. Transforming him – this is the way to go – into a lapdog (the Oedipal animal par excellence). Clearly he was separated from Guattari, too militant and too Marxist. What made this taming operation possible? The notion of “difference”. The same way another concept that the author of The Logic of Sense derives from Spinoza, the concept of “immanence”, difference became yet another tool in the hands of those intent on celebrating the magnificence of neo-liberalism. To be more precise: through immanence, by confusing Spinoza with Plotinus, the end of social conflict and unconditional love for the world as it is are promoted; so though difference the triumph of individuals, indeed with their fundamental differences, and of individualism.

Already in 1964, reviewing a crucial yet overlooked work by Gilbert Simondon, Deleuze clarified that difference is not about already formed individuals. Rather, there are processes of individuation, and these processes do not coincide with Being; they are “moments”, and none of them are a first moment. The notion of difference, erroneously confused with notions of quality and extension (of individuated bodies), concerns Being as an “intensive field” that is pre-individual and genetic. With reference to the words of Simondon, difference is combined with the concept – a fundamental one in thermodynamics – of “potential energy”. It thus becomes “difference in potential” which governs, accompanies and directs the (physical, biological and psychic) constitution of individuals. In the process of vital, biological and psychic individuation, the pre-individual “disparity” does not limit its “information”, like it does in the case of a stone or a crystal. The intensive field, real despite being not actual, carries on “working”, modifying – starting from the encounters, the compositions and the breakdown – bodies, affects and ideas.

In Deleuze the notion of difference, instead of relating to the notion of individual (so dear to the liberals, old and new), coincides with that of “singularity”. Being, despite not being individual, is singular. To be more precise, it coincides with a multiplicity of singularities, of potential differences that – in the words of Deleuze – “constitute individualities”.

Here, from an ontological perspective, a significant reference to Bergson is made. Certainly we are able to ban the gross simplifications constructed by neoliberals, who would like the concept of difference to serve the market and representative democracy, but not much else. It is not clear, in fact, why, by defining the notion of difference as productive singularity, Deleuze is also dealing with politics and conflict.

To understand this it is necessary to carefully study the works by Deleuze dedicated to Spinoza. Provided, clearly, one does

not confuse Spinoza with Plotinus. Always remembering, that is, that before Spinoza came Nicholas of Cusa, and, more importantly, Bruno’s materialism. By studying, not browsing through, these texts, we realize that the notion of singularity coincides with that of potentia. Spinoza’s potentia, the singular essence, is the conatus, the striving to preserve its being, pars intensiva of the infinite productive potency of God. To use a German word, often found in Leibniz and in Schelling and Marx, we can say that God (or Being or Nature) is Quelle, source. This source is always multiple, an infinite series of potencies, as infinite are the entities in which these potencies are expressed.

Potencies converge on the level of essence (in which they are “complicated”): but is this also true at the level of existence (in which they “explicate” themselves)? What is potency from the perspective of entities, of things thrown into existence? It is potency, always actual, of being affected, in the sense of suffering and of acting. Using a mathematical term often found in Deleuze, we can say that the potency of each “singular thing” is always a “differential relation” between passion and action. A relation, it must be clear, that stems from the conatus.

The passage from ontology to politics, and to conflict, can be grasped in a more distinct way when Deleuze, reading Spinoza’s Ethics, analyses the “finite modes”, the dynamics shaped by bodies and the patterns of passions. Spinoza’s “pessimism” – and, may I add, Deleuze’s pessimism – is beyond dispute: we are firstly passive, marked by inadequate ideas, dominated by imagination. Our potency is mainly the ability to suffer, sad passions (envy, vainglory, hate, jealousy, unrestrained ambition, etc.) that compress, tire the cupiditas (the human conatus). Nonetheless passions, always fluctuating and casual, are also joyful. Love, but also, more plainly, a food whose taste makes us content, a joke we cannot resist, a sunset with its unseen colours, the gentleness of a person’s features, the combination with an instrument that mitigates the strain caused by work: these are fortuitous encounters, joyful passions that increase our potency to exist and act.

If, however, we were only subject to chance, would we have politics, and what’s more, democracy? Evidently not, but the increase of joyful passions is the ethical premise to the common notions, in other words, to reason. Spinoza, Deleuze insists, presents a becoming-active – a becoming-adequate-cause of one’s own affects – that is entirely materialistic. Common notions are nothing more than joyful assemblies which have been conquered from the point of view of the cause, of necessity. Rules of combination, concentrations that are acted and not fortuitously suffered. And again: to speak of common notions means to speak of the increase, common and singular, of the potency to exist and to act (which is always potency to think). From sad passions to reason, from reason to the love of God as Nature, to the third kind of knowledge: the process of liberation never concerns individuals, rather, it is a transition – always reversible, antagonistic and polemical – from the ontological and ethic multiplicity to the multitudo, the social and political body of democracy. It is not possible to overlook the great attention given by Deleuze to the beatitudo and to part V of Spinoza’s Ethics. To experience our eternity, to become “purely expressive”, means to go from an adequate knowledge of relations to an adequate knowledge of singular essences. It is also clear that https://www.viagrasansordonnancefr.com/ in order to experience one’s pars intensiva, of the gradus of one’s potency, for Deleuze and for Spinoza, it is necessary to “become-revolutionary”, to actively compose one’s “rights” (which coincide with potencies), to build institutions which may conquer sad passions. Absolute democracy, in other words.

Through productive singularities, we rediscover Deleuze, once again, philosopher of conflict and of affirmation at the same time. It is a pity that not all are able to accept this combination. Indeed many would like to use the second horn, ontological and ethic, to cancel the first one, political and polemical. It is however necessary to continue telling the truth.